HeroesEach point of Def-Bonus will add +0.2% (max +20.0%) to the defense of troops owned by the same player that are located in the same village

All above bonuses are additive, not multiplicitive. For example, a unit with a level 16 Armoury upgrade, behind a level 10 Palisade, will have a total bonus of (26.90 + 28.00 = +54.90%), as opposed to (126.90% × 128.00% = 162.43%).

Note: The Palace/Residence defense is the same for both Infantry and Cavalry; e.g., at level 10, it offers 200 Infantry Defense and 200 Cavalry Defense. This is affected by walls. These values are not listed at either the Wiki or the FAQ; I inferred them from one of the third-party combat calculators.

Best Military Tribe: The 12 Crop Test

One of the bigger decisions of the game is what Tribe to choose. I calced out attack and defense rates of the units to determine which set of troops are best; Roman, Gaul, or Teuton.

I used 12 crops and tried to find out which units are the best for their tribe, and then what combinations are the best for an overall balanced effect. These calculations where done regardless of the unit’s cost.

Overall I think the Gauls are the best race (not counting traps in there).
– They are the best raiders, speed attackers, and melee defenders
– Overall they are ~28% stronger than the Romans, and ~33% stronger than the Teutons.

Romans have the best attacker unit (Imperians), and Teutons have the best cavalry defense unit (Spearfighters).

The best set ups (if you are equally concerned with attack, defense and speed) are –

This guide does not include which is the cheapest though, so while Gauls may be stronger overall (per crop) a Teuton may be able to recruit faster, and have a better army (in two Teuton villages vs. one Gaul village).

Headings:
– SpVa Specific Value (The stat specific value)
– TV : Total Value, (The total value of their [att + m/c def] x units for 12 crop)
– ModV : Modified Value, (SpVa + TV showing 2x the stat they will be most used for)
– Unit Name (the name of the unit)

E.g.: To break-even between an Imperian’s Attack and Off-Bonus, the attacking army (I’ll use Imperians-only for the example) would need to have a total pre-Hero, pre-Blacksmith Attack of 37,000 points. That would be (37,000 / 70 = ~529 Imperians) before the Off-Bonus becomes a better value than Attack.

Combat Formulae

—– Normal Attack —–

(Note: Attacker’s defense values are not used; defender’s attack values are not used.)

Cavalry%: Attack value of cavalry / total attack value of attacking army

—– Scouting —–
(Note: This is not the exact formula, but it provides a close approximation.)

Attacking scouts are considered to have 35 attack (subject to all the normal modifiers). Blacksmith upgrades give ~2.1% bonus per level instead of ~1.5% bonus per level.
Defending scouts are considered to have 20 attack (subject to all the normal modifiers). Armory upgrades give ~3.0% bonus per level instead of ~1.5% bonus per level.

Then all bonuses from bonus buildings (such as the Brickworks and Flour Mill) and Oases are added together, then applied to the raw production listed above.

For example, if you had a level 5 Brickworks (+25% Clay production) and one Clay oasis (+25% Clay production), then a bonus of 50% would be added to your Clay production.

Next, the bonuses from any Gold production bonuses you have activated get applied.

For example, if you had 4 level 10 Clay Pits (800 total production before bonuses) and a level 5 Brickworks (+25% Clay production; increases the total production to 1,000), then activating the Gold bonus for Clay would increase the 1,000 production to 1,250 production.

Finally, for Wheat only, your population and the wheat consumption of your army is subtracted from your production.

Here is some data on scout defenses:

(All of these are assuming equal populations; if you are smaller than the attacker, you will be more successful in defending.)

With 5 non-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 96 non-upgraded scouts or 27 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 3 non-upgraded scouts or 2 fully-upgraded scouts.

With 10 non-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 757 non-upgraded scouts or 217 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 6 non-upgraded scouts or 4 fully-upgraded scouts.

With 15 non-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 2,544 non-upgraded scouts or 729 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 8 non-upgraded scouts or 6 fully-upgraded scouts.

With 5 fully-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 544 non-upgraded scouts or 156 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 5 non-upgraded scouts or 3 fully-upgraded scouts.

With 10 fully-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 4,316 non-upgraded scouts or 1,238 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 10 non-upgraded scouts or 7 fully-upgraded scouts.

With 15 fully-upgraded scouts and no wall, you can detect any scouting attempts from up to 14,527 non-upgraded scouts or 4,166 fully-upgraded scouts; you can completely kill scouting attempts of up to 15 non-upgraded scouts or 10 fully-upgraded scouts.

To approximate the results with a wall, multiply the number of attacking scouts listed above by the defense bonus of your wall.

Trade Office Calculations

Got bored before my bedtime. So I did these Calc’s.
Note: Multiply by 3 to get Speedserver Bonus Product.

I’ve now thrown all my calculations into an Excel worksheet and discovered quite a few transcription and calculation errors that I made using pen, paper and calc.

Basically, I was penalizing praetorians as I had their cost as 600 rather than 460. On the other hand, I was rewarding 24/7 roman hammer armies, as now they are the second least efficient (most costly) hammer behind teutons building maces + TKs.

Feel free to edit as you see fit:

================

How valuable is the superior wheat efficiency of romans?

On the total cost of ownership, per 100K defense generated, assuming a 50/50 inf/cav attack, which is the most likely attack mix for hammer attacks:

A praetorian defense will break even with phalanxes and spears on cost for the same amount of defense if they live longer than, respectively, 41.25 and 80.83 days. If the inf/cav attack ratio breaks more towards infantry, which it often will, then the romans will do relatively better (i.e. – break even faster).

On the total cost of ownership, per 100K defense generated (assuming a 100/0 inf/cav attack):

Praetorians are slow and expensive to build initially. However, due to their wheat efficiency and because most attacks (other than cavalry raids) will be significantly skewed towards infantry attack for cost efficiency reasons, they usually end up being the most cost effective defenders. Still, build your city wall to protect your upfront investment in praetorians. The longer they live, the cheaper they become relative to the other primary defenders.

Romans need to build+tech defense production in more (1.5x) cities in order to produce the same amount of defense per unit time because of relatively longer build times.

Romans and teuts should trade praets for spearmen (or, less preferably, use legos) to even out their inf/cav defense ratios. I recommend a 3:1 or higher ratio of praets:spears as many attack armies will be heavily skewed towards infantry in total attack, due to infantry’s cheaper cost. Basically, you want just enough spears (or legos) to make all cavalry raids too expensive. Gauls can get by on just phalanxes, but if you find a roman that will trade at some multiple (e.g. – 9:10 praets for phalanxes), it could be a good idea to up your infantry defense.

Legos, paladins, druidriders and haeduans are expensive for pure defense. If you build these units, then they should be built for other purposes as well (i.e. – raiding, mobile defense, attack, etc.).

Imperians will break even with maces, axes and swords on a cost basis for the same amount of offense in 9.0, 7.1 and 12.9 days, respectively. These are significantly better break even times than the defensive infantry.

Axes will break even with maces in just 9.6 days. Note, however, that if resource cost is not a constraint then macemen are preferable for 24/7 building due to their higher att/min, speed and carrying capacity (see below).

Lessons learned:

Imps are cheap in total cost of ownership, although slow to produce, relative to other attack infantry.

Macemen cost (a lot) more than axemen if they stick around for more than about ten days. However, teutons should build macemen rather than axemen when resources are not an issue due to higher att/time production (see below).

ECs break even with EIs after 4.6 days. HDs break even w/ ECs after 104 days.

Lessons learned:

It is far cheaper to produce the same amount of attack w/ infantry versus cavalry. Most offensive armies will skew significantly toward infantry attack power for exactly this reason. Therefore, your defenses should also skew towards defending against infantry.

ECs are actually cheaper than EIs for the same amount of attack. If you want to raid and/or have speed then EIs can make sense. For pure attack power go ECs.

On an att/cost basis, ECs and TTs are almost exactly identical.

TKs are always cheaper per attack than any other attack cavalry.

======================

Eventually, you will build a hammer army, which is BY FAR your biggest offensive army, that you should house in your 15c capital. For hammer armies, resource costs are largely unimportant as your entire empire will fund the building in this single city. Note, that you DO NOT build your hammer in your capital, but preferably a nearby (e.g. – adjacent) city. You do this because you cannot build Great Barracks or Great Stable in your capital and because you won’t have enough space there for all the desirable military buildings due to granaries and warehouses taking up so much space.

Build times are what dominate how good your hammer army can be, so we want to maximize att/time here, with some thought given towards wheat efficiency to maximize the size of your hammer relative to your empire. In a hammer city producing 24/7 in lvl 20 barracks and a lvl 20 stable (13.5% of default build time).

If you can afford both GB and GS (you better!), then double the amount of att/hr while quadrupling the rsrc/hr. The inf/cav ratio will remain the same.

Lessons learned:

Teutons can produce significantly more att/hr than the other races at superior cost, even when wheat efficiency is taken into consideration (see below).

Romans can output offensive points nearly as fast as the other races if they build ECs 24/7. If they try to skew heavily towards imps to minimize cost, then they can have a significantly more efficient, but MUCH smaller and longer to build/repair hammer.

A 24/7 roman hammer army will be skewed towards cavalry in total attack points at 58.4% cavalry, gauls will almost be even at 49.8% and teuts will be slightly skewed towards infantry at 47.7% (macemen) or almost even at 50.3% (axemen).

If you can’t afford to keep both your GS + GB going 24/7, then favor keeping your GB running as we saw infantry has far better att/rsrc ratios. Because of this fact, hammer armies may be more skewed towards infantry in practice than the theoretically optimal numbers above.

As your hammer approaches the maximum size that your empire can support, superior wheat efficiency really begins to matter. In this case, teuts should build axemen rather than macemen. In general, production should shift more towards infantry than cavalry due to better overall cost and wheat efficiency.

===========================

On the total cost of ownership, using the 24/7 hour build per 100K offense generated:

Teuts building axes will immediately do better than breaking even with both Romans and Gauls. They will break even on cost w/ a Teut building macemen after 10.3 days.

Gauls will break even in 29.7 days w/ Teuts building macemen. They will break w/ Romans after 41.5 days.

Romans will break even in 28.0 days w/ Teuts building macemen.

Lessons learned:

Teutons building axes have the cheapest / most efficient and fastest growing 24/7 hammer armies.

Romans get boned because imperians have such long build times. They need to build ECs to keep up in total offensive output, but ECs have poor wheat efficiency leaving a 24/7 roman hammer w/ the 2nd worst total cost of ownership behind teuts building macemen.

=======================

The following are the cheapest attackers and defenders (vs 50/50 inf/cav total attack) in initial production cost on a per 1000 resource cost basis.

Use this as your production guide when resources are tight or you want maximum stats per resource spent.

Macemen are far and away the cheapest attackers in initial cost, although they fall quickly behind in total cost when wheat efficiency is taken into account (see below).

The other infantry attack units cost roughly the same, but imps will be slightly cheaper over time due to wheat efficiency (see below).

Praetorians are quite expensive initially when compared to other races’ primary defensive units => build your city wall so you don’t lose them before their wheat efficiency can make them cost relatively less (see below).

Legos aren’t quite as useless as they might seem. If you actually use them for both offense and defense, then they can be worth their cost. If you only use them for one or the other, then stick w/ the specialists. In particular, legos probably should not be in your hammer army (see below) and since most of your other empire’s army should be defense, their only real place is acting as raiders + secondary defenders (evening out inf/cav defense ratios, see below).

Paladins, druidriders and haeduans are quite expensive for the defense they provide. You should hold off on building these unless you intend to attack/raid with them or have a mobile defense to help other cities.